Huzzah!

So, as usual, I start off my blog post with apologizing for not posting in like ever. :)  Unfortunately things like work get in the way, and I have too many things competing for my free time.  Like my latest big adventure, the Renaissance Festival.  My friend and fellow fantasy novel lover Dalia introduced me to this wonderful event, and I will forever be in her debt.  We had plans to take off to the festival around noon on Saturday, so Friday night I get home from work, and think, hmmm, maybe target has some flowy shirts or something, because if there is one thing I love it's a good costume.  Husband came along on my Target run, even though he wasn't coming along to the Renn Fest because he had more important things to do (who needs to winterize a cabin?).  Because he loves adventures just as much as I do, he suggested heading into the Goodwill and seeing if we could scrounge up a more elaborate costume than just a flowy shirt.  I came out with a red linen dress, which after cutting it down the middle looked something like this:

Target did not turn up anything promising, so off to JoAnns for several yards of muslin.  After 3 hours of work including modifying the red dress (slicing and dicing and adding grommets) and sewing up a simple blouse and skirt (elastic is always your friend for costume making) which ended with a grumpy Laura at 1:30 a.m., I had a pretty awesome costume if I do say so myself.  

 Me trying to remember how to curtsy

 It mostly just looks wrinkled in this picture, but the wrinkles come from side gathers to make the skirt fuller.

Unfortunately, I didn't take too many photos while there, stupidly.  But trust me, it was really, really cool.  I also made a pointy hat with a floaty veil for Dalia, but forgot to take a picture of that too.

 There were so many amazing things about the Rennasaince Festival, but I think my personal favorite was the fried mac and cheese on a stick.  You just can't beat it.  Well, that and the 3 hours of people watching - I was actually underdressed it turned out, there were some amazing costumes there and I'm going to have to start early on my costume for next year. :)

Being a Busy Bee...

Hubby and I spent the long weekend at our cabin in the woods, which means he does lots of work on the cabin and I get down to business with my sewing machine.  I actually managed to complete four garments, although to be fair three of them had a decent amount of progress done already.

I bought this fabric knowing I wanted to do something cool with matching up the stripes.  It's a cotton/silk blend, and half of the stripes are sheer.  It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with the lining, but given the fact I started it at 10 pm, I had to go with what I had in my stash, which meant a bright yellow chiffon.  If I had time, I think I would have bought a turquoise lining fabric, so there would be more contrast, but I'm happy with the way it turned out.  The entire shirt is finished with french seams, as I'm trying to be more conscientious about making sure the inside is as pretty as the outside.

How is it that simple projects take forever?

So, this is a super simple shirt that took a really long time.  I originally intended to make a drapey sweater type shirt, but that didn't work out so well.  I wore it once, but wasn't a fan, so I thought I would try to just make a simple tank top that would let the cool texture shine.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but the darker color is actually a little bit sheer and the lighter purple is raised.  The gathered-looking bits are actually gathered, so it's a neat texture.  Anyway, I just used a basic tank top laid on top of the fabric to cut it out, and sewed it up.  I happened to have some petersham ribbon on hand that matched almost perfectly, so I used that to bind the neckline.  I just found out about petersham ribbon, which is a more awesome version of grosgrain ribbon.  Because the edges are looped instead of straight, it curves really nicely.  Anyway, here it is!

Back to the Future of Fashion

So how do we all feel about culottes?  Back in the day (like 2nd grade or so) they made a regular appearance in my wardrobe, but I really haven't given them a thought since then.  But these days I'm all about comfortableness, and seeing a really cute pattern on the interwebs, decided to give them a try.  I've ordered Megan Nielsen's Tania Culotte pattern, so we'll see how it goes.

What are your thoughts - am I crazy?

A Scarf by Another Name

I love scarfs, but I tend to buy them and never wear them.  So back in January I figured I would turn this scarf into a shirt.  It was a bit tricky since I decided to only line the scarf section, but it came out ok.  The inside is completely finished with french seams and I hand sewed the neckline, so I actually am proud of the finishing details.  Unfortunately, I hadn't pre-washed my fabric, and it shrunk a bit more than I had anticipated.

Pants!

So I've really been trying to up my sewing game the past few months, and have several failures and a few successes under my belt.  I would technically classify these as a failure, but the very fact that I made my first (finished) pair of pants makes them a semi-success.  I have two other pairs of pants that are sitting in my "I don't want to work on you anymore because you suck" pile, but we'll see if they ever get finished.  The fly is completely wrong (if I move the zipper is instantly visible), and I had to add the pleats because the fit was so bad, but overall, they look like real pants (with pockets!), and I'm proud of them.  I may turn them into bumming around the house pants though, because they are a washed silk and incredibly comfortable.

The cycle of life

Despite the fact Hubby and I have put a moratorium on acquiring any more frogs, we adopted a new little guy last weekend.  I occasionally check a reptile rescue website, and have never seen any frogs on there, but there just happened to be one last time.  The woman we adopted him from had purchased a head of lettuce at a organic market, had it in the fridge for three days, and then her daughter went to wash it in the sink, and a frog jumped out!  She did an impressive amount of research, but it was getting hard to take care of him, so she wanted him to go to a good home, and now he has lots of froggy friends.  She named him Gilbert, and he is an American green tree frog.

Unfortunately, two days later my grey tree frog, Bo, passed away, so it was a sad day.

Getting Things in Order

This past weekend I was feeling under the weather and Hubby has been seriously under the weather for a few weeks now, so we didn't do much besides nap and hang out at home, with random spurts of cleaning and errand running.  I've been attempting to follow along with Apartment Therapy's January Cure, which is all about getting your house in order, but needless to say, our place somehow has become a pit of clutter, and we've fallen a bit behind.  I can say I crossed off the downstairs bathroom finally as being done, and with the exception of the kitchen, every other room is probably 75% completed.  One more solid weekend and I think we can call it done.  One of the errands we accomplished was taking a bunch of stuff to Goodwill, which made such a difference mentally, at least.

While most areas are not fit to be seen yet, one thing that is done and makes me feel better is my organized craft tools pegboard:

The Best Ice Cream in the World

Superman flavour! YEAH!, originally uploaded by milknosugar.

So I was talking to my friend the other day about ice cream, of which I'm not actually that big of a fan.  Growing up though, there was definitely one flavor that I loved.  I was shocked to find out though that my friend had no idea what I was talking about when I said superman ice cream, so after some google searching commenced, we found out the origins of superman ice cream are shrouded in mystery, but it definitely is a Michigan/midwest sort of thing.  How sad!  Anyone else out there a fan or am I all alone in this?

The Long Shrug

So I've decided that 2013 will be the year that I seriously start sewing.  I've been sewing for a long time, and even attempted to sew my own wedding dress (not possible when you start less than a month before the wedding), but pretty much the only pattern I have down pat is a tote bag.  And honestly, how hard is it to sew together a couple of squares?  My christmas present this past year was a serger, which somehow husband has learned how to use and I haven't yet (oops), but it's complicated.

I have actually managed to complete a few projects this year so far though, using my regular machine and a fair amount of good old-fashioned hand-sewing (who knew I actually had patience for that sort of thing?).  I had bought this really cool sheer, but with fluffy yarn woven through fabric, and immediately knew I wanted to make something like this:

This issue I had with that is that every single pattern I could find for a shrug was about half the length, which looks terrible on me and makes me look like an extremely short fat person, which I'm not.  So I busted out my handy dandy dress form (not sure if I ever did a post on that, but it has quite the story behind it as well), and draped away until I came up with a super easy pattern that seemed to work.  I ended up binding the edges, which was the whole hand-sewing bit, which took a couple of episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to complete.  I also recently discovered bias-tape makers, which are amazing and I now use all the time.  I am not a fan of the feel of pre-made bias tape, and it's awesome to just whip some up out of whatever fabric I want.  Anyway, without further ado, I present the Long Shrug:

 

 

About a week after I completed it though, I somehow managed to find instructions on making a long shrug without even trying, so if anyone else wants to try it out, check it out here.

Random Question...

Husband is usually the recipient of all my strange thoughts/questions, and he thinks I'm crazy, so I thought I would spread my craziness around, and ask you all my random questions. :)

Today's question - what does the inside of a rubber band ball look like?  Are the rubber bands just really tiny in the center, or is it a tangled mess?  My vote is tangled mess, but I would like it better if they were just tinier and tinier rubber bands.  Anyone else have a thought?

Breaking out the sewing machine...

So after my insane attempt to sew a wedding dress last year (which has been sitting crumpled up in a box since I got back from the honeymoon a year ago), I've finally gotten motivated to start sewing clothes again.  I've made a bazillion tote bags since then, but wanted a bit of variety.  The trouble with me is, I can't do anything simply, like use a pattern for instance.  So my first attempt to get back into sewing was to try and duplicate this drapy knit top:

Let's just say it didn't end up well, and is now currently crumpled up in the closet next to the wedding dress.  Luckily it was fabric from the bargain bin, so not too terrible of a loss.

I had also gotten some sheer beige pleated fabric that I wanted to use to create an overlay on very thin knit dress that I had.  Unfortunately I did not buy enough, so I decided to make a skirt instead.  There were some bumps along the way, which involved me cutting out the lining, so it's a bit on the sheer side now, but overall it came out decently, and I've gotten a complement on it already. :)

I have quite the line-up of things to work on, but the two currently in progress are a teal stretch wool pencil skirt (also patternless, but super simple), and a matching ruched top and skirt, which I actually am using a pattern for, but happens to be an advanced pattern, so we'll see how that goes:

Phyllis Diller is cooking dinner tonight

So this is pretty random, but something I just had to share.  I was reading a post on Burda Style about celebrity designers, and came across the fact that Phyllis Diller has her own brand of chili.  How bizarre is that?  I mean, I'm not really a chili eater to begin with, but what exactly is the thought process that one goes through to determine that is what to focus branding energies on?

Photo: Burda Style

Looking Up

I've always liked interesting ceilings.  In high school, my bedroom walls were lemonade yellow and my ceiling was a gorgeous dark prussian blue, and it was awesome.  The moon and stars wallpaper border wasn't quite so awesome, but still, the colors were great.  So when I ran across the photo below on Apartment Therapy today, it immediately went into the inspiration file for when I have a house of my own and can do crazy things like paint a circus tent ceiling:

Seeing as how I'm not really planning on bringing children into the world, I've been racking my brain to figure out a way that I can actually accomplish this without looking like a crazy person, and I think it would work really well in a bathroom.  What do you think?

In other news, I've recently joined the world of Pinterest, so you can see what I'm up to there.

Photo:  Apartment Therapy

All Blinged Out

I've never been much of a bracelet person.  My mom has about a bazillion bracelets, but apparently she didn't pass on the fondness for them to me.  I'm generally pretty picky about accessorizing, usually just with one big piece of jewelry, like one necklace, or just a pair of earrings, or one big ring, mostly because I'm a bit obsessive about matching, but it's gotten even worse now that I wear my wedding ring all the time, i.e., I don't wear much other jewelry at all.  I've been slowly been trying to break myself out of my habits, and I'm thinking lots and lots of bracelets is the way to go next, like on the Atlantic-Pacific blog which I just discovered today:

I'm a big fan already of her ability to pile on the jewelry and look really put together, while I'm afraid if I do I will end up looking like an old lady who went crazy at a flea market.  We'll see if I'm able to pull it off...

On a side note, red, yellow, and gold are the colors I'm really liking this moment, and she pulls them all together really well in this outfit:

Photos from Atlantic-Pacific